voluntaryXchange

Paying Off the Bets Early

Paddy Power has already paid off everyone who bet that the Republicans would win control of the House of Representatives – they are that sure that the race is over.

Via Carpe Diem.

Technorati Tags: 2010,election,house,republican

R.I.P. Bloglines

Bloglines, an early and popular RSS aggregator is being discontinued in a few hours.

I used this service for too long – it was an easy jump when I decided to switch to Google Reader.

But … I had a lot of stuff archived there … and yes, I spent an hour or so re-archiving it.

Technorati Tags: bloglines

CBS News Reports 215K at the Rally

Yesterday, I wondered whether press credential requests could predict the size of a rally.

Jon Stewart’s rally got 1000 requests vs. 450 for Glenn Beck’s rally.

Beck’s rally attraced 87K people, or about one credential request for a little less than every 200 people attending.

That’s in the ballpark for today’s rally, which works out to a little more than 200 participants per press pass request.

The whopper then is the “Tea Party On the Mall” rally in September. It attracted 60-70K, but only got 150 credential requests, for a ratio of over 400 to 1.

I wonder whether this shortfall is because of lack of interest on the part of the legacy media in the Tea Party, or lack of press push from the Tea Party.

Technorati Tags: rally,mall,washington,press,pass,credential

Where Blue Jeans Come From

In America, we say they came from California during the Gold Rush.

It turns out that’s a marketing ploy created in the 1920’s.

People around the coastal border of Italy and France – think Genoa and Nimes – claim  they’ve been making them for centuries.

Now, there’s proof. These paintings were done in the late 1600’s:

Technorati Tags: blue,jeans,genoa,origin,nimes,voluntary,exchange,voluntaryxchange,economics,finance,david,tufte,dave,urban,consulting,suu,southern,utah,university,sob,school,business

The barber’s customer in jeans …

A woman in a jeans skirt …

A boy in a jacket … collar turned up just like me last night …

Via Kottke via The History Blog.

Technorati Tags: blue,jeans,genoa

Predicting Washington Rallies with Press Interest

More than twice as many journalists want to cover Jon Stewart’s “Rally To Restore Sanity” as did cover Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally.

The ratio is more than 6 to 1 for this weekend’s rally vs. the “Tea Party on the Mall” rally in September.

This is instructive.

I think it’s reasonable to conclude that more press interest should be a predictor of bigger turnout.

We’ll see.

ABC News, not a friend to the tea party movement, reported the attendance at the “Tea Party On the Mall” at 60-70K.

CBS News reported 87K at Glenn Beck’s rally.

Technorati Tags: press,pass,credential,rally,jon,stewart,glenn,beck,tea,party

“The Book I No Longer Recommend”

TechRepublic recommends 6 monster stories for Halloween.

What got me though, was this section:

I used to recommend Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, but I no longer do that because of an incident with a coworker. This coworker always walked to work when the weather was nice. The walk was pleasant and was less than a quarter mile through a small patch of forest, which was much better than walking more than a mile along the roads or driving. That was the situation until I recommended that he read Pet Sematary.

Several months later it was pointed out to me that my coworker stopped walking through the woods — in fact, he seemed to avoid any forest or large grouping of trees. Piecing things together from what he told some of our coworkers, I learned that this change was due to his fear of the Wendigo. After reading Pet Sematary, it seems my coworker became convinced that there was a Wendigo in that little patch of forest, and no one could convince him otherwise. So, while I will re-read this book myself, I no longer recommend it to others.

I still recommend that book, but for my part, the wendigo is mere background to the more horrifying and specific monster in that book.

And even though I’m not a woman, King’s Gerald’s Game is much more frightening.

Technorati Tags: stephen,king,pet,semetary

Update Firefox!

A zero-day † was discovered at the Nobel Peace Prize site.

This is particularly nasty, since it can hijack your computer in a “drive-by” – you only have to visit the site to lose control.

A fix is available by upgrading to version 3.6.12: inside Firefox, click “Help”, and then “Check for Updates”.

† A zero-day is a malware attack that is successfully beating defenses right now, and which can be propagated to other sites.

Technorati Tags: firefox,zero-day,malware

The Funniest Stupid Thing You’ll See On the Internet Today

Throwing tiny pies at insects’ faces with a mini-catapault:

Millimetres Matter from Samsung

Via Kottke.

Technorati Tags: insect,pie,face,catapault

Is Wikileaks Julian Assange a Terrorist?

Here’s a tech blogs that think so.

What type of activity is hacking into U.S. systems and stealing information, hiding it online and mirroring it from server to server to avoid the authorities? That’s the typical modus operandi for an online pirate or cyberterrorist.

…

He needs to be treated by the allies in the same way we’d treat any other terrorist. He needs to be captured, arrested, tried, and probably jailed.

This is an opinion that you will simply not hear in the legacy media.

But … um … tech geeks actually have experience in dealing with cyberterrorists, so you’d think they’d be a natural source for the legacy media.

I wonder why they’re not?

Technorati Tags: wikileaks,julian,assange,terrorist,cyberterrorist

How to Tell If You’re Busy

New colleague and light blogger at Agile Archer, Tyler Stillman, wonders how I can digest the stuff I read and still find time to post.

The answer for Tyler is that I don’t do it very well.

Here’s an example.

It’s Tuesday. Before 7 AM I’m reading the last several days of Tim Worstall with my latte.

I see a cool quote from a post Tim put up on Friday:

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to graph out the unemployment rate and see that it takes about 3 times as long for it to fall as it does to rise every single time no matter who is in charge.

I save it for later. At 10 AM I decide to take a little break and post a requote.

It’s then that I follow Tim’s link … to my own post from last Thursday morning.

Well … at least it help up to a … hmmm … fresh appreciation.

Technorati Tags: unemployment,democrat,republican,rocket,scientist,quote